Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Win7, disk imaging, vmware
f0dder:
Btw, does the Paragon app do a raw partition dump sector-by-sector, or will be backup file be limited to the used partition size?
--- End quote ---
You can specify Raw processing under the Advanced tab during a backup which is what you want I believe.-4wd (May 13, 2009, 02:21 AM)
--- End quote ---
Actually I'd prefer only backing up the used part, getting a 12gig file for 4gig used is silly - but if the raw dump is an option then it's all cool. If the tool supports restoring to a different partition size, it'd be even cooler.
Doesn't most of the registry refer to locations as the Volume, (eg. C:, D:, etc) ?
With only the boot.ini, (or BCD thing), referring to rdisk and partition, etc.-4wd (May 13, 2009, 02:21 AM)
--- End quote ---
I think the registry contains mappings between drive letters and partitions, but I'm not sure!
Who knows, maybe the Boot Corrector on the PDB9 Rescue disk will fix any boot problem ;)-4wd (May 13, 2009, 02:21 AM)
--- End quote ---
Soooounds interesting!
I'm just about to do a backup of my VirtPC W7 and then I'll restore it to something, possibly my old Acer laptop, and see what happens.-4wd (May 13, 2009, 02:21 AM)
--- End quote ---
Thanks for doing this!
Well, sounds like the Paragon tool might fit my needs after all - that'd be quite nice. The rescue image interface looks nice... can it be put on a USB stick, and can it access network locations? :P
(I ask too many questions instead of trying myself :-[, but I'm currently quite busy with school exam programming project)
4wd:
Btw, does the Paragon app do a raw partition dump sector-by-sector, or will be backup file be limited to the used partition size?
--- End quote ---
You can specify Raw processing under the Advanced tab during a backup which is what you want I believe.-4wd (May 13, 2009, 02:21 AM)
--- End quote ---
Actually I'd prefer only backing up the used part, getting a 12gig file for 4gig used is silly - but if the raw dump is an option then it's all cool.-f0dder (May 13, 2009, 02:38 AM)
--- End quote ---
Sorry, misread you - by default it only backs up the used portion as per TI. You have to enable RAW if you want the whole disk including unused portions.
Also, as I mentioned above, by default it doesn't include pagefile.sys but you can tell it to include it, although I don't see the point.
I'm just about to do a backup of my VirtPC W7 and then I'll restore it to something, possibly my old Acer laptop, and see what happens.-4wd (May 13, 2009, 02:21 AM)
--- End quote ---
Thanks for doing this!
--- End quote ---
No problem, backup just finished - I did Partition backups. The MBR and then the OS partition because I didn't know if a whole disk backup would let me restore to just the boot partition of the Acer. Now I just got to copy them from the VirtPC to the real PC so I can copy them to the Acer so I can screw it up :D
The rescue image interface looks nice... can it be put on a USB stick, and can it access network locations? :P
--- End quote ---
I don't see why not, it's just a Linux system with an initial LILO menu - there is plenty of info for making a flash drive bootable for Linux. The worst that could happen is that you copy the ISO, (~55MB), to the flash drive and then boot it using GRUB4DOS which is child's play.
EDIT: Or you could just select to build the Rescue Disk onto Flash Device from the Rescue Media Builder........DOH! :-[
While I think of it, here's the initial menu:
Win7, disk imaging, vmware
(I ask too many questions instead of trying myself :-[, but I'm currently quite busy with school exam programming project)
--- End quote ---
What else are us retired folk good for :P
EDIT: Just in the midst of restoring Win7 to the Acer but I thought I'd mention this now: DB9 can restore to different hardware, (Select it before initiating the operation - XP/2003 based only), this is normally something you have to buy from Acronis IIRC, Universal Restore?
And yes, you get the option to resize the partition you're restoring.
UPDATE: So far I've tried 3 times to restore to the Acer and all times it has locked up when it reaches the same file, (winhlp32.exe), at about 97% completed.
I tried once with 'Restore to different hardware' turned on but it still failed on the same file. The backup verifies OK, so I'm just trying from another source, if that doesn't work I'll try another backup.
I tried booting the Acer even though the restore failed and Win7 displays a warning saying software/hardware has changed and requests the Win7 install CD. So it looks like it might be possible if I can just get a full restoration to happen.
f0dder:
Ah, all sounds very good, 4wd!
Today's java'ing is done, and FedEx got their fingers out of <wherever> and managed to deliver the SSD - I only have a few hours before work, so no OS reinstall today... but there's time to play around with the Win7 VM and DB9 (and a little speed testing).
For your envy viewing pleasure (yes, it's a 64GB SLC X25-E):
Win7, disk imaging, vmware
...I need to get some superglue and fix poor Cody, and punish the girl_friend who broke him >_<
Lashiec:
Hmm, a plane ticket to Denmark looks to be significantly cheaper than this particular SSD... I'm afraid it won't last too much in your hands! :P
Then again, I could get a completely new computer with that much money ;D. Tell us later how the little thing performs :)
f0dder:
OK, I've played around a bit.
First, SSD performance... wow :). HD-Tach rates it at 240MB/s read over the entire drive. Copying a 5gig file from my 2x74gig raptor raid-strip to the disk delivered a constant 113MB/s speed (gotta test with a ramdisk source to see whether it's the SSD or the raid that's setting the speed limit). Of course both of those speeds are relativel irrelevant, what's important is the random-scattered-read/write performance, which I don't have anything to benchmark... but it will be "subjectively tested" once I put an OS and all applications on it.
Win7, disk imaging, vmware
Next, for the disk imaging applications... I followed the link to the Paragon Drive Backup site and registered for a license code. There was no download there, so I though I was supposed to grab the trial. Looked nice, features were good etc, but no place to enter the license code, and thus I couldn't test the backup functionality. Considered whether I had to grab the files from #2 site in 4wd's first reply (which doesn't feel 100% right since it's not Paragon's own site), but I only got ~20kb/s from there, so I uninstalled and rebooted... and then my system was hosed, because the uninstaller for some reason had removed the 32bit MS VC++ runtimes from my system, wtf? Fortunately I was still able to use explorer.exe to locate some random application that had decided to bundle the runtimes in it's own install folder and copy to %WINDIR%\SysWow64... phew.
So I think I've decided to play with Acronis TrueImage instead, even though PDB looked like it might be as good (or better, with SID changing and all). A shame both applications are so damn huge these days, all I really need is the recovery CD iso image, I don't need all the bloated junk :)
Anyway, tested in vmware: seems like Win7 has no trouble restoring an image from a disk at IDE0:0 to IDE1:1 (primary master -> secondary slave) - that rocks. And I did create an entirely new, empty disk to restore to, so bootloader etc. were restored just fine - rocks! Trying to restore a vmware image to physical machine won't be tested until I've made a new install and tweaked it some more. And I'll probably try it out on my testbox before I do it on my workstation on the SSD, just to play it safe.
Hopefully I'll be running Win7 off the SSD no later than friday :)
UPDATE: I still wonder what use the 100meg BCD partition is. For fun, I wiped virtual disk #2, and restored only MBR and the Windows partition (ie, not the BCD area). Gave "BOOTMGR missing" error when trying to boot. Booted from the Win7-RC ISO and choose a system repair (which created C:\boot, ie the BCD files) - still BOOTMGR missing. Copied BOOTMGR from the BCD-partition on vmdisk1, and... presto, things work! So it seems you don't need that partition, I still wonder if it's useful to keep it split that way, though.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version